Catching up with {hellip} Julia Butterfly Hill

Catching up with {hellip} Julia Butterfly Hill

Julia Butterfy Hill, environmentalist, activist, blogger and Bay Area celebrity, stands for a portrait at a friends house on Tuesday April 7, 2009 in El Cerrito, Calif.

Julia Butterfy Hill, environmentalist, activist, blogger and Bay Area celebrity, stands for a portrait at a friends house on Tuesday April 7, 2009 in El Cerrito, Calif.

Photo: Mike Kepka, The Chronicle

Photo: Mike Kepka, The Chronicle

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Julia Butterfy Hill, environmentalist, activist, blogger and Bay Area celebrity, stands for a portrait at a friends house on Tuesday April 7, 2009 in El Cerrito, Calif.

Julia Butterfy Hill, environmentalist, activist, blogger and Bay Area celebrity, stands for a portrait at a friends house on Tuesday April 7, 2009 in El Cerrito, Calif.

Photo: Mike Kepka, The Chronicle

Catching up with {hellip} Julia Butterfly Hill

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Julia Butterfly Hill climbed down from the tree she named Luna 10 years ago this December. After 738 days, and surviving an El Niño winter on the tip of a redwood, her protest turned Hill into an international symbol for environmental activism.

Since then, she's become an inspirational speaker (some 250 events a year), a best-selling author and the co-founder of the Engage Network, a nonprofit that trains small groups of civic leaders to work toward social change.

Now the 35-year-old, based in the East Bay for seven years, is taking a step out of the public eye and moving to Playa Viva, a beachfront sustainable resort in Zihuatanejo, Mexico. Living in a warm climate will ease a congenital respiratory problem (she uses an inhaler when in the Bay Area), she said, and the ocean will soothe a painful case of hip dysplasia.

The downtime will be a welcome comfort. A biopic of Hill's life is in development, and if all goes well, it will yet again cast an intense spotlight in her direction. This year, she's spending Earth Day speaking at Wheaton College in Norton, Mass.

"I'm an introvert by nature, which is part of the reason I climbed a tree," she joked. "But when you climb a tree, you don't expect the world to arrive at your platform."

Q:If you had one minute to bend former President George W. Bush's ear:

A: (Long pause) I don't think I would say anything. I would just sit there and hold space. One of the great lessons I learned in the tree-sit is that it's important to know your truth and speak your truth. But it's also important to know when not to speak. There's a time to listen and be silent.

Q:If it's 9 a.m. on a Tuesday morning, we'll find Julia:

A: Either doing yoga or having a cup of tea.

Q:If it's 9 p.m. on a Friday night, we'd find you:

A: By myself, which I love, or with a small group of friends, which I love, or doing a benefit of some sort, like I am tonight.

Q:You haven't owned a car since you were 18. Ever miss it?

A: No. I've got two bikes that get me everywhere I need to go. And public transportation.

Q:What girl were you in high school?

A: I didn't belong, I didn't fit in. I didn't understand other people; I didn't know how to relate. ... There's a line of a poem that just ran through me: "I feel like I've been dropped from an alien stork into the womb of the comfortably numb," the womb being our society. That's how I felt then, and that's how I sometimes feel now. ... I have been stubborn and getting into trouble since I was 2, but I learned how to redirect that into good causes.

Q:Your life is being made into a film. What movie recently left you inspired?

A: I don't really watch movies. I don't own a TV. ... But I was happy to see the movie about the farm in South Central was nominated for an Oscar ("The Garden"). I was really saddened and excited about "Milk"- excited to see that a movie like that can get made and shown today - and saddened at the same time because we're sitting in the Castro Theatre, and Prop. Hate had just passed. ... How much has really changed?

Q:When you were in the tree, what comfort foods did you crave?

A: Orange juice. I tried to be mindful that whatever I asked for, my team had to hike it up 2 1/2 miles uphill, so I didn't ask for it. But they knew me, and how much I loved it, so they would bring me up that orange juice every once in a while. ... On my birthday one year, my team brought me a vegan chocolate raspberry cake - it was perfect when it got to the top. I literally started sobbing, and I'm starting to tear up now. They could have brought a cupcake and that would have been fine, but they brought this cake - all the way up the mountain - without mushing it or crumbling it - and it just showed how much love we had for each other.

Q:If you were going to spend 738 days in one place, aside from a tree, where would it be?

A: If I could have the perfect setup, probably the Caribbean somewhere, next to the ocean.

Q:What music do you have to bring on a road trip?

A: Mattafix. They're out of the U.K. ... But there's a hard-core side to me, too. My friends think it's funny because I am the poster child for hippie tree hugger, but I like Rage Against the Machine, Tool, the Chili Peppers. Depends on my mood.

A: No. ... Anything I'm mentioned in, or a part of in that way, always feels weird to me. It's so not me. Even though I appreciate that others are using my story to utilize or inspire others, I never, ever, get over the fact that it's just weird to me. But I appreciate that the story has made it into popular culture.

Q:Any plans to visit Luna for the 10th anniversary?

A: I go about twice a year. ... I usually go with people who were part of the (tree-sit), or someone who is important to me.

Q:Do you climb it?

A: No.

Q:You bring your own plates and kitchenware to restaurants. Ever been kicked out or refused service?

A: Sometimes they'll say it's against the health code, and we'll just leave. ... A stewardess on a flight once offered me a napkin and I said, "No thank you, I don't need it." She insisted I take it, and after I said, "No really, I don't need it," she got so mad she shoved it into my thigh.

Q:Facebook or Twitter? Or both?

A: Facebook. It was set up for me, and for a long time I resisted it ... but then I realized I can do an "update" and (communicate) with hundreds and hundreds of people at once. Now I like it.

Q:Ever look up an ex on Facebook?

A: No, but I haven't really had many. I'm so drastically independent I don't tend to flourish in relationships.

Q:When you Google yourself, you feel:

A: I refuse to Google myself. I just don't engage in that reality. ... If I were to read all the media that's been done on me, I would no longer be me. I've seen that happen to people who started as activists, then became celebrities. It's like the house of mirrors at a carnival. If you start believing what people are saying, before you know it, you're no longer you. ... But my manager and executive director have a Google Alert for Julia Butterfly Hill, and they check it out.

A: What's next for me. The tree-sit and action since created this very particular role that Julia Butterfly Hill fulfills. And, because I'm a person committed to growth, to looking for where my edge is, that role is now too narrow for me. But it's hard to figure out what's next because there's this entire reality that's been created around this role that I play. And I'm not discounting that role - I've been able to help communities that I love very much. And at the same time, I'm looking for what's next for me, and it's so easy to stay in that role that myself and this world co-created together. But I just know that there's aspects of it that need to shed.

Q:The only thing more difficult than living in a tree for 738 days is:

A: Being with the everyday sadness and pain of what I know is very real and possible for our world, and the gap between that and where we currently are. It is so right within our grasp to be the more peaceful, healthy, sustainable world and country - it's so close - and yet the gap within that possibility is so far. And for a sensitive person like me, that's painful. It's not just some concept that I have in my head; it's something that I feel very deeply. And to wake up and say, "I'm going to wake up and care anyway" - it's been 10 years with that. It hurts.